Community Power in Population Health Improvement Proceedings of a Workshop (2022) / Chapter Skim
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5 From Vision to Action: Effective Ways to Support Grassroots Community Power Building
5 From Vision to Action: Effective Ways to Support Grassroots Community Power Building
Pages 53-72
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From page 53... ...
(Fernandes, Frey) • Power building should be approached with a transformational perspective, as opposed to a transactional or siloed approach.
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From page 54... ...
In 2020, power building led to a visible amplification of demands for racial and economic justice and for voter participation, particularly among Black, Asian, and Latinx communities. Vaidya said power-building groups have played a critical role in protecting and helping local communities with immediate needs during the pandemic, from fighting evictions to accessing food and shelter.
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From page 55... ...
. RWJF funded Lead Local, a collaborative effort that spent 2 years producing some of the most up-to-date research on how community power building advances health equity.1 Manuel Pastor and the team at the USC Equity Research Institute have studied social movements and grassroots community-organizing efforts for more than 20 years, and they were partners in Lead Local.
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From page 56... ...
Her guidance was informed by her work directing the SNF Agora Institute, which is dedicated to strengthening global democracy with a particular focus on civil society organizations, and the JHU P3 research lab, which is named for its focus on understanding how to make the participation of ordinary people possible, powerful, and probable. This research involves finding ways to harness the resources of the academy to help strengthen community organizers' efforts to promote community power building and health equity.
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From page 57... ...
She shifted her focus to doing research that would enable her to learn with a variety of groups about how to exercise power for the outcomes most important to them; this led her to the field of power building. Alignment for Power A first step to understanding how to make social change is to clarify an organization's theory of change, Han explained.
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From page 58... ...
Both the P3 lab and the SNF Agora Institute study how to strengthen the processes of people acting together. The P3 lab works with community groups across the United States, including the AMOS Project in Ohio,3 Living United for Change in Arizona,4 New Virginia Majority in Virginia,5 and ISAIAH in Minnesota.6 Most of these groups act as statewide, independent, political power organizations focused on addressing multiple issues with particular constituencies.
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From page 59... ...
In building partnerships between researchers and community power groups, P3 has identified three lessons about how to provide support effectively. The first lesson is to focus on shared learning.
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From page 60... ...
Noting the variety of professional backgrounds present, she invited each of the remaining speakers to describe their sector or field and reflect on any ideas shared by Han that resonated with their own experiences. Power Building at the State Level Ethan Frey, program officer at the Ford Foundation, began his career as a political and labor organizer focused on workplace and electoral campaigns.7 He is currently part of the Ford Foundation's Cities and States team, leading a grantmaking initiative.
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From page 61... ...
Given his team's focus on effecting change at the state level by partnering with grassroots organizations, Frey emphasized the importance of clarity around strategy and desired power shifts. For instance, efforts to build power via the narrative arena and by shaping policy through state legislatures require clarity about desired power shifts in those domains.
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From page 62... ...
The Role of Self-Determination and Ideology in Power Building Julie Fernandes, associate director for institutional accountability and individual liberty at the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) , spent most of her career as an advocate before becoming a funder.10 She described herself as a civil rights lawyer who loves research for learning and who engages in a continual effort to improve her practice to better serve everyone.
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From page 63... ...
Entities dedicated to constituent power building may need support in developing strategies to move that power toward achieving desired outcomes, she added. Fernandes noted that narrative is a focus of her work with the Democracy and Power Innovation Fund at RFF.
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That sentiment is ideology, not truth, just as anti-Black racism is an ideology. Power building involves understanding how to shift ideology around who has value, what matters, what capital means, and how it influences the world, she maintained.
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From page 65... ...
In the philanthropy and social change sphere, emphasis is often placed on political power and, at times, cultural and narrative power are a secondary focus in working to change who the decision makers are. Although real economic power building is foundational, it receives little attention within the nonprofit, philanthropic 11 More information about Full Spectrum Capital Partners is available at https://full spectrumcapitalpartners.us (accessed March 1, 2021)
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From page 66... ...
The community power-building ecosystem model presented by Vaidya also pertains to political power, he added. Other frameworks and approaches have also been developed that capture the complexities of cultural power building, economic power building, and integrated or transformative power (see Figure 5-2)
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From page 67... ...
FIGURE 5-2 Approaches to cultural, political, economic, and transformative power building. 67 SOURCE: James presentation, January 28, 2021.
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From page 68... ...
, a national network of faith-based, community-organizing groups. Before becoming Faith in Action's national campaigns director, Joy Cushman worked at the New Organizing Institute, an organization that supported community power building across the United States.
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From page 69... ...
Han added that the process involved a combination of building buy-in and developing the ability to articulate the assumptions they wanted to challenge or query via research. The Role of Funding in Power Building Vaidya asked the funders on the panel how they came to be in their current roles.
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From page 70... ...
Leaders make internal design choices about structuring people and resources that shape power outcomes in the real world. This dynamic is instructive for grant makers in selecting projects while wading through the huge nonprofit industrial complex.
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From page 71... ...
Vaidya asked the speakers to offer advice to people who are new to organizing and power building about how to build relationships with a sector and engage in shared learning. James suggested adopting a holistic perspective in thinking about power and communities.
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